Saray Khumalo safe at Everest base camp after epic trek

Saray Khumalo, the first black African woman to summit Mount Everest, reached base camp in good health on Saturday afternoon, Khumalo’s spokesperson Jeannette McGill told eNCA. 

Born in Zambia, with a Rwandan bloodline and now a South African, Khumalo achieved her goal of becoming the first black woman from Africa to summit Mount Everest after four attempts.

ALSO READ: SA congratulates Saray Khumalo for scaling Everest

On her Summits with a Purpose Facebook page, Khumalo said “God made it possible for an African daughter of the soil [to] step on top of the world!”

On Friday, news broke that two of Khumalo’s teammates, Seamus Lawless and Ravi Thakar, had both perished during their descent.

Lawless, from Ireland, fell from an 8,300m high area known as the Balcony on Thursday, while India national Ravi Thakar died in his sleep on Thursday at Camp Four at an high altitude of 7,900m.

The search for Lawless has been called off.

Khumalo had to be rescued from Mount Everest by helicopter during her previous attempt to summit in 2017 after she was injured during inclement weather.

After being on Everest during both the Serac fall in 2014 and the earthquake in 2015, she reached the south summit in 2017.

Through pure perseverance, grit and courage she decided to return to Mount Everest in 2019.  During this expedition, she supported the Dr Thandi Ndlovu Foundation.

In 2012, Saray summitted Mt Kilimanjaro and in the process raised funds for the Lunchbox Fund.

Her mountaineering passion took hold and she embarked on a journey to climb the highest peak on each continent, not for herself but for the education of African children. She summitted Mt Elbrus in 2014 and Mt Aconcagua in 2015.

Khumalo became a Nelson Mandela Libraries ambassador and raised nearly R1 million for school libraries.

She is also the founder of 7 Summits with a purpose, an initiative that raises money for underprivileged schools through her climbing.

Less than 5,000 people have managed to summit Everest since Edmund Hilary made history by becoming the first person to do so in 1953.

(Compiled by Nica Schreuder, additional reporting by Daniel Friedman and Amanda Watson)

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.